Friday, February 19, 2016

10 Evidences for Biblical Creation: Conclusion

#1: The Bible: The best evidence we have for any event from antiquity is not “scientific” evidence but rather it is the historical records written down by people who were witnesses to the event. The same is true for our origins. No one alive today was there to observe the start of the universe. What we have is the revealed word of the Creator Who tells us how it was done. Even if we had no scientific evidence at all about the creation, we could still know with confidence that the world was created recently, that the first man was created miraculously, and that the world was once judged by a global flood. We know this because the details have been revealed to us by God.

Critics, of course, object on the grounds that the Bible could not be considered “scientific” evidence. The irony is that what is considered scientific evidence is usually determined by philosophical reasons. Most of the philosophical underpinnings of science could not pass scientific scrutiny. Even the principle of seeking only natural explanations is a philosophical assumption. Please show me, for example, the scientific evidence that demonstrates all phenomena must have a natural explanation. Nothing about the secular definitions of science precludes the Bible from being true. If God created the universe by fiat, that is the truth regardless of whether or not it is considered scientific.

It's sad but true that way too many Christians trust the shifting opinions of fallible men over the inspired word of the Creator. A tired cliché is that the Bible tells us that God created the world and science tells us how. Really? As I've already discussed in this series, science has no explanation for the origin of matter, or energy, or physical laws, or life. The only thing that secular theories of our origins tell us is that some unknown process caused chemicals to come alive and this unidentified being was our first ancestor which gradually evolved over billions of years to become all the different kinds of life we see now. In other words, “science” tells us precisely that God didn't do it while really having no idea how else it could have been done.

In John 3:12, Jesus said to Nicodemus, “If I told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things?” I believe the reverse is also true; if we claim to believe the Bible about heavenly things, how can we not believe what it says about earthly things? The Bible is not ambiguous about the creation. Genesis 1 is very clear about the six days of creation. Exodus 20:11 affirms these were ordinary days: “For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and made it holy.” Why should I reject the clear words of this passage and seek some obscure meaning of the term “six days”? Because “science” tells us it's not really six days? No, thank you!

Jesus often would chide the Pharisees by reminding them of what the Scriptures say. He would preface His remarks with the stinging words, “Haven't you read...?” Whenever He did this, He always relied on the clear meaning of the passage to make His point. He never appealed to some tortured interpretation of any text. He often quoted from Genesis. When asked about marriage, Jesus responded by saying, “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female....?” (Matthew 19:4). Jesus mentioned Abel by name in Matthew 23:35 and spoke of him as a real person. In Luke 17:26, Jesus says His coming will be, “just as it happened in the days of Noah.” If Noah Flood wasn't a real event, then is Christ's return a real event? Time after time, Jesus spoke of the people and events of the Old Testament as matters of fact.

Is the Bible the revealed word of God? Is Jesus the Word who created all things (John 1:3)? If yes, then how can we not trust what the Bible – and Jesus specifically – tells us about the creation and the Flood? The Bible is – by far – the best evidence we have for the miraculous, recent creation of the universe!

4 comments:

I'll start with the point I came up with when I deduced that this would be your top evidence, a couple of weeks ago.

The Bible proves too much. It proved to Martin Luther (and to many other Christians, Protestant and Catholic alike) that the Earth stood motionless at the center of the universe and the sun orbited it, not vice-versa (Luther specifically cited Joshua 10, though several other passages could be referenced). It proved to Lactantius Firmianus, early in the fourth century, that Luther's spherical-Earth geocentrism was itself a compromise; against the pagan idea (accepted by many compromising Christians even in Constantine's day) that the Earth was spherical, a few Christians held to the plain meaning of scripture that it was flat. It proved to many Christians in the antebellum American South that slavery was entirely consistent with God's will and that "love thy neighbor as thyself" did not necessarily preclude owning him as inheritable chattel (cf. Leviticus 25:44-46). If you claim that they were wrong, then you imply that sometimes, tortured interpretations yield a more accurate meaning of the text than its clear meaning.

And that is just limited to conflicts that actually existed and left records. It still seems to me that the Bible is pretty clear (e.g. Genesis 7:11 -- the later use of the same phrase in Malachi may represent a linguistic fossil from an discarded cosmology, like our own "four corners of the Earth" or "sunrise") that the sky is the sort of thing that can have hatchways in it that can be opened to let the waters above the sky fall through as rain. For that matter, it's pretty clear to me from the flood account that God was surprised and dismayed by how sinful humans would turn out to be: one does not regret decisions that turn out exactly as one expected. But since you hold that God is omniscient and knows the future in detail, you cannot possibly allow the text its plain meaning, and therefore insist that -- again -- a tortured interpretation yields the true meaning, and that "windows in the sky" must obviously be a figure of speech whereas "six days" is obviously entirely literal. Believing what the Bible says about Earthly things is a more complicated matter than one might at first glance suspect.

I've noted before that explanations are necessarily naturalistic. An explanation is an account of why things are one way rather than another way; they are rooted in the idea that causes have natures and tend to produce some results and not others. A cause consistent with any conceivable result does not explain the result you actually get. A recent creation that is consistent with seeing galaxies billions of light-years away, and with the existence of radiometric dates of hundreds of millions of centuries, is not an explanation at all.

I'm glad that you were able to guess in advance that my #1 evidence would be the Bible. I've said many times that the Bible is the final authority on anything it addresses. I'm sure I've even said the Bible is the best evidence for creation. If you, my most vocal visitor, couldn't have guessed that I would put the Bible at the head of the list of evidence for creation, then I haven't been doing a good job making my point before now.

Am I correct in saying that you don't believe the Bible could be evidence for creation because it TOO plainly says God created the world? I'm sure you wouldn't characterize it that way but it sure sounds like that's what you're saying when you said, “The Bible proves too much.”

I'm trying to pinpoint exactly the fallacy you're committing. I believe it would best qualify as a sweeping generalization. You're saying that since the Bible uses figures of speech then Genesis isn't meant to be literal. It's usually not hard to identify a figure of speech. One characteristic of a figure of speech is brevity. If I said, “John has a heart of gold,” you would know what I mean. However, if I typed two paragraphs describing how doctors operated on John's chest, opened his ribs, and saw that his heart was made out of gold, then suddenly I'm not using a figure of speech anymore.

Perhaps some people have mistakenly interpreted, “opened the windows of heaven” to mean there are literally portals in the vault of the sky that could be opened and rain poured out through them. Them over thinking what is obviously a figure of speech doesn't diminish the veracity of the Bible. But we're not talking about figures of speech, are we? We're talking about whole chapters that give minute details about the creation and the flood. It's the difference between saying John has a heart of gold and saying exploratory surgery has examined John's heart and determined it's really made of gold. Are you saying that Genesis 1-11 in an eleven chapter long figure of speech?

While we're on the subject, I'll comment on the errors of Luther and others like him. Once upon a time, people had weird ideas about cosmology. The weird ideas didn't necessarily come from the Bible; it was the geocentric model of people like Ptolemy. “Scientific” models included imaginary phenomena like epicycles and deferents. If someone tries to interpret the Bible to make it seem to conform to secular theories, he will look foolish when the secular theories go bust. That was the problem of the church in Galileo's time and it's a problem in the church today. I've seen way too many Christians reject the clear meaning of the Bible and substitute a tortured meaning of the text in a vain attempt to make immutable Scriptures conform with shifting opinions of godless men.

Am I correct in saying that you don't believe the Bible could be evidence for creation because it TOO plainly says God created the world?

No. Do you seriously think that was what I was arguing? I decided to omit what I assumed was the obvious point: the Bible itself is weak evidence for its assertions (since we know that texts containing mistaken or false assertions are plentiful), and concentrate on another point: you interpret the Bible literally, except where you find the literal meaning so blatantly false that you cannot accept that the Bible really says that, and hence you insist that there the meaning is figurative. Old Earth creationists do the same; they simply have a lower threshold of blatancy. And of course theistic evolutionists have a lower threshold still. Note that geocentrist creationists have a higher threshold for blatant absurdity than you do, and freely accept the plain meaning of biblical statements such as Psalm 104:5 -- "He set the Earth on its foundations so it cannot be moved." And in past times, there were flat Earth creationists who took the whole "foundations" part literally.

Perhaps some people have mistakenly interpreted, “opened the windows of heaven” to mean there are literally portals in the vault of the sky that could be opened and rain poured out through them.

Why is that a mistake? Unlike, e.g. passages where Jesus wishes to gather a disobedient people under his wings, it does not defy a literal reading; we know that many people in the ancient near east subscribed to precisely such a cosmology (including some Jews in the first centuries BC and AD). Your entire reason for assuming that it must be figurative is that it is obviously false if read literally. Some people don't have a problem with that. Other people extend the same principle to cases where, e.g. a literal reading of the Bible contradicts stratigraphy, radiometric dating, and the fact that we can see distant galaxies.

Once upon a time, people had weird ideas about cosmology. The weird ideas didn't necessarily come from the Bible;

The weird ideas had plenty of support in the Bible. Joshua 10 really does say that the sun, not the Earth, stood still. Ecclesiastes 1:5 really does say that when we can't see the sun (so it's not describing things from a "phenomenological" stance), it's moving back to the place where it rises. There isn't one reference in the Bible to "as the Earth turns," which surely helped the case of early modern astronomers who denied that it did move. And as noted, Psalm 104 really does speak of the Earth as immobile. And a popular late medieval/early modern view of cosmology thought that, beyond the sphere of fixed stars, there was a sphere of water (the "waters above the sky" of Genesis 1) -- because the Bible said that water was there, and it had to be somewhere.

Rejecting the clear meaning of the Bible for tortured meanings that reflect increases in human knowledge was an old game long before anyone had ideas about evolution or an ancient Earth.

I guess not. Like I said, you're arguing a sweeping generalization – namely that, because the Bible uses figures of speech, then where it talks about the creation, it is also using figures of speech. I was just trying to make the point that you acknowledge the Bible discusses the creation plainly even though you claim it clearly can't mean what it says.

You said, “Note that geocentrist creationists have a higher threshold for blatant absurdity than you do, and freely accept the plain meaning of biblical statements such as Psalm 104:5 -- "He set the Earth on its foundations so it cannot be moved." And in past times, there were flat Earth creationists who took the whole "foundations" part literally.”

I'm not aware of any geocentrist creationists unless you're referring to the ones who lived when everyone (including secular philosophers) was a geocentrist. Neither do I know any flat earth creationists. The modern, flat-earth movement is lead by an evolutionist.

When you bring up poetic passages as if they are meant to be examples of the Bible speaking facts, why don't critics ever cite passages like Isaiah 55:12, “The mountains and hills will burst into song, and the trees of the field will clap their hands”? Instead, they only talk about passages of the earth having foundations or not moving. They do this, of course, to perpetuate the false narrative that the Bible teaches things like geocentrism and that Christians slavishly believe every word in the Bible literally.

You said, “Joshua 10 really does say that the sun, not the Earth, stood still.”

Tell me the absolute truth: have you ever made a comment like, “the sun went behind a cloud”? I'll bet you have. Even if not, most other people have and, because they have, they can understand that it's an acceptable and ordinary practice to use language that describes the apparent motion of the sun. If some people have used these kinds of texts to argue that the Bible teaches geocentrism, they're just wrong. That doesn't make the Bible wrong.

I'll make one more point in conclusion. You've said my, “entire reason for assuming that [a passage] must be figurative is that it is obviously false if read literally.” If that were true, why do you think I so stubbornly cling to creationism or the Flood if “science” has obviously shown them to be false if Genesis is read literally? It's because I can easily identify when the Bible is speaking a matter of fact and when it is using a figure of speech. You can tell the difference too. Most people can. I do not let science overrule the clear teaching of the Bible. That's the error of theistic evolutionists.

RKBentley

About me

I'm a husband, a father, and a Christian. Being a Christian is not something I do on Sundays but rather it is who I am. My faith influences everything I do. Christians are commanded to always be ready to give an answer – a reason for the hope that is in us. I take that command seriously. Psalm 19:7 says that the testimony of the LORD is sure. If we base all of our thinking on the Bible, we can't go wrong. I started this blog to encourage other Christians and challenge critics on a variety of issues. Whether you agree or disagree with me, you're welcome here. Please follow me on Twitter and friend me on FaceBook! God bless!!